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A review by kraghen21
The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabiński
3.0
Polish modernist literary horror tales - heavily occupied with trains, railways, fire, and more than any theme: variations on split/doubled identities.
Sounds interesting from the outside, and Grabinski came with a few recommendations from literary sources I respect a lot.
Unfortunately, none of these stories left an everlasting impression on me.
Grabinski seems to work with one of three types of stories; there is the modernist critique of technology, where the influence of trains has a corrupting influence on the mind of men; there is the erotically charged victorian-style horror story; and there is the story centering on a metaphysical conceit, expository and verbose to the point of detriment.
It's a pity because Grabinski has some peculiar interests, that could make for truly interesting fables. And while he can string sentences together [albeit in a quite "classical" writing style], his flat and indistinguishable characters [all of them seem to be the same model of man] leave a lot to be desired, and the stories themselves don't quite reach out of trope-y terrain for the genre.
My favorite story was 'Vengeance of the Elementals' which felt stylistically different from the rest of the collection. Harder to pin to any known trope and in turn the most unique story. Here, a famed firefighter has kept the local vicinity safe, but his seemingly supernatural resistance to fire slowly dwindles, as the enigmatic fire elementals combat him in different ways.
PS.
It is always a risk when you read this type of fiction from this era, but of course, the female characters are either sexually fetishized objects or succubi - go figure.
Sounds interesting from the outside, and Grabinski came with a few recommendations from literary sources I respect a lot.
Unfortunately, none of these stories left an everlasting impression on me.
Grabinski seems to work with one of three types of stories; there is the modernist critique of technology, where the influence of trains has a corrupting influence on the mind of men; there is the erotically charged victorian-style horror story; and there is the story centering on a metaphysical conceit, expository and verbose to the point of detriment.
It's a pity because Grabinski has some peculiar interests, that could make for truly interesting fables. And while he can string sentences together [albeit in a quite "classical" writing style], his flat and indistinguishable characters [all of them seem to be the same model of man] leave a lot to be desired, and the stories themselves don't quite reach out of trope-y terrain for the genre.
My favorite story was 'Vengeance of the Elementals' which felt stylistically different from the rest of the collection. Harder to pin to any known trope and in turn the most unique story. Here, a famed firefighter has kept the local vicinity safe, but his seemingly supernatural resistance to fire slowly dwindles, as the enigmatic fire elementals combat him in different ways.
PS.
It is always a risk when you read this type of fiction from this era, but of course, the female characters are either sexually fetishized objects or succubi - go figure.